Lewis Black @ the Palace, 3/22/13

ALBANY — Lewis Black doubts he could live in Albany — in any state capital, for that matter, and definitely not in Washington. Such proximity to politicians, he said Friday night from the stage of the Palace Theatre, would likely result in his arrest.

If he lived here, he said, “At some point I’m going to have to go over (to the Capitol) and beat the (crap) out of somebody.”

Black’s current comedy tour is titled “The Rant Is Due,” and Black, who’s now 64, lived up to that billing, fulminating for 75 minutes about national leaders and disappointment in his generation. Assessing what he sees as a lack of progress, with a broken health-care system an a world-leading nation that no longer has a space program, Black said, “This is my future; I waited my whole life for it. And I got handed a bag of (crap).” Thinking back to the activism espoused by his contemporaries in their youth, he said, “We screwed up the world instead of changing it. When we said we we were going to change the world, we didn’t understand what out skill set was.”

During his best moments on Friday, Black was an astute social and political observer. He has no patience with arguments against a national health-care program. “The question is, ‘Do we take care of as my people as possible, or don’t we?'” He went on, “I find it odd that we’re even asking that question … in a country that calls itself a ‘Christian nation,’ a country founded on ‘Christian values.'” The message seems to be, he said, “Love thy neighbor, but don’t take his temperature.”

And sometimes Black was genuinely kooky, as when he said oil companies’ avarice is so great that, once the world runs out of petroleum, the Exxon and BP would find a way to “squeeze oil out of adolescents’ faces.”

Decrying the overdiagnosis of attention-deficit disorder and the resultant prescribing of ADD drugs for children, he said, “We give speed to kids, and we won’t allow adults to smoke pot. Does this make any sense?”

At times, though, Black seemed little more than a grumpy old man complaining about the world and kids these days. A friend of mine said, “I feel like at any moment he’s going to tell us how, as a kid, he had to walk to school in the snow every day, uphill, in both directions.”

Black’s friend and longtime opener John Bowman started the evening with topical comedy that included riffs on the sexual abuse committed by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Alluding to the chorus of the John Fogerty tune “Centerfield,” Bowman said, “People used to love that song ‘Put me in, coach.’ Now it’s horrible.” He also sang comic ditties including a version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with the words adapted to fit Notre Dame football player Manti T’eo and his fake girlfriend.